


It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish

by officialsarahjay



Series: Interstate [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dramedy, Drug Addiction, Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/officialsarahjay/pseuds/officialsarahjay
Summary: A road comedy to rehab except this isn’t a comedy and no one is laughing.
Series: Interstate [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982200
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	1. It's Not A Fashion Statement

**Author's Note:**

> I only recently discovered the show on Netflix so I want to preface this by saying I hope I adequately captured the spirit of the characters. I apologize if my details are off, I'm new to Umbrella Academy and the idea came to me after obsessively binge watching the first two seasons. Please enjoy.

**2017**

It had actually been the EKG that gently pulled Klaus Hargreeves from his womb of total unconsciousness. Not the voices, not the lingering scent of bleach, not the woman in the room next to him screaming out for more morphine. No, it was the damn heartbeat monitor and its incessant beep beep beep that called him back to the land of the living.

He groaned and blocked the room’s florescent light from his eyes with a free arm. Around him, consciousness began to lap into being. The footfall of nurses, scurrying between stations. The rhythmic beeps from medical equipment. The soft melody of voices outside his door.

“Oh fuck,” he groaned.

He rolled over onto his side and pulled his knees to his chest, loathing at that moment how the cheap, thin hospital sheet snaked around his limbs. With what hospitals charged, he expected Egyptian cotton with an infinitely high thread count, damn it!

Just then, a woman said “thank you, doctor” and the door clicked shut. And over his right shoulder, he could hear Ben, sweet Ben, gently whispering _d_ _on’t look now, but Allison’s here_.

He could barely contain his mirth.

“Allison,” he croaked as he withdrew his arm from over his eyes. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Sitting directly across from him in a cheap pleather armchair was his sister Allison, sweet Allison, and he realized she must have flown _all._ _t_ _hat._ _w_ _ay._ from California _just_ to see him. Grimacing, he could sense an intervention awaiting him just outside his door and he absolutely couldn’t bear the thought of _another_ intervention, not yet.

“I suppose I was listed somewhere as your emergency contact,” she answered with a shrug. She winced, and Klaus realized the wince was perhaps her attempt at a smile. “And, ah...how are you feeling, Klaus?”

“Oh, rejuvenated,” Klaus said, rolling onto his back and pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Thank you for asking. I assume you flew?”

“Can we cut the crap?”

Klaus gave Allison a weak smile. Shaking her head, Allison cleared her throat and crossed-uncrossed-crossed her legs before torpedoing in with a sharp “do you remember how you got here?”

And that was the $64,000 Question wasn’t it? How did Klaus get here? He remembered a woman, tall, commanding, promising a good time and some seriously pure shit from Afghanistan. But after that, it was all a mystery.

“Maybe it was that dominatrix,” he wondered aloud and Allison gave him a quizzical expression before leaning over the bed’s railing, her expression set.

“Paramedics found you alone in an abandoned motel. Whoever you were with had decided to call you in anonymously. They couldn’t even be damned to stay. You were there for so long that they had to use Narcan on you. Twice,” she said in a low voice.

Klaus blinked. That didn’t seem right. An abandoned motel? He wouldn’t step foot in places like that, much less overdose in them! No, he liked his overdoses to take place in gilded bathtubs high above the city and safely tucked away inside of swank penthouses. Abandoned motels were just too on the nose!

But Ben was standing right there, right over Allison’s shoulder, and he was nodding his head, and...and that just didn’t sound right. None of it sounded right. Abandoned motel?

“But she _is_ right,” Ben said quietly.

“Huh. Imagine that,” Klaus said.

“Listen...Klaus...do you, you know, want to go to rehab? Again?” Allison asked, her tone now much softer. “I mean, if you could go at no cost, would you?”

Klaus sighed. If that wasn’t a loaded question.

“What do you mean, at no cost?” he drawled.

“Exactly that. I would pay for your entire stay, no questions asked.”

Klaus blinked quickly. Well, that certainly changed everything.

“You would do that _für mich_?”

“Of course. You’re family.”

Well, that was bullshit. But. It was lovely bullshit and Klaus wasn’t in the position to say no to lovely bullshit. So he sighed and nodded and fell flat on his back and said “Fine, I suppose. I’ll go to rehab. Again.”

Allison’s face lit up. She clasped her hands together and exhaled.

“Great,” she sighed, visibly relieved. “I’ve already made arrangements for you at this incredible facility in Malibu. Once you’re discharged, we can get your things and leave right away!”

“You’ve already made arrangements?”

Allison smiled sheepishly.

“Well...” she began.

“Have you just been holding this bed in your pocket this entire time, waiting for when I inevitably fuck up?”

“Why are you so focused on how I made the arrangements? None of that matters! You don’t know how lucky you are to be arguing with me right now!”

Klaus grunted and toyed with his shiny new plastic wristband. A therapist he had seen three therapists ago had advised him to throw away his collection of hospital wristbands, but he had never seen so many in his life and he got a sick thrill from tossing another one into the pile. Which would explain why this therapist was three therapists ago.

“You used your power,” he whispered in an almost accusatory tone.

“But I’m still paying for your stay!” Allison whispered right back.

Klaus sighed. Well, it did offer just a bit of legitimacy to _her_ offer, didn’t it?

“And you did fly all this way to see me,” he sighed. “Alright. Fine. I’ll go. But only if you don’t, you know...tell the others about this. Unless the others…?”

“They don’t know, no,” Allison confirmed. She sighed, and her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you, you don’t know how much this means to me.”

Klaus just waved his hand. Good bye.

*

The next morning, right at the ass-crack of dawn, the two living Hargreeves and their ghostly brother climbed into a nondescript beige rental car and began to chase the sun west.

“I’m surprised you wanted to sit all the way back there,” Allison said to the rearview mirror. Stretched luxuriously across the bench of the backseat was Klaus, right arm bent over his head as he admired his expensive new cuff.

“Yeah, well...you know,” he said, because that sounded more coherent than “Ben always calls shotgun.” But oh, if Ben didn’t look adorable in the front seat. It made Klaus’s little cocaine heart so very happy to see Ben in the front seat. One day, when he was finally dead, Klaus was going to give Ben the pat on the head he so richly deserved.

But that was still a short ways away, and Klaus’s mortal vessel was going to need a cigarette if he was going to give Ben his pat on the head. So he reached inside the breast pocket of his worn black overcoat and retrieved a crushed pack of cigarettes. He fished out the least mangled one and reached for the window crank, twisting it down down down as he asked “Is this alright?”

“Absolutely not, the rental policy strictly states – ”

“Thank you,” Klaus said as he pressed his palms together in an expression of gratitude. Immediately after that, he bit the butt of his cigarette and lit it.

“Damn it,” Allison hissed. Ben turned from his spot in the front seat and threw Klaus a disapproving look.

“ _Really_?”

“Oh come on Ben, I almost died,” Klaus said flatly.

“ _Ben_?” Allison repeated.

“Oh sorry, yeah, hallucinations from alcohol withdrawal. Sometimes I see Ben. It’s extremely fucked up,” Klaus said. He flicked the ash from his cigarette and turned to look up at the ceiling. “Ben, that’s crazy, I don’t even know what ‘ghost riding the whip’ means.”

“I almost think this is a new low for you, Klaus,” Ben said, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry Allison, I think we’re going to have to ride this one out together unless I can get a bottle of vodka to taper with,” Klaus sighed. He cast a forlorn expression toward the back of Allison’s head and draped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Right, Ben?”

“Do not drag me into this,” Ben warned.

“Why didn’t the discharge papers say anything about this?” Allison moaned.

“Hospitals don’t take alcohol withdrawal as seriously as they should,” Klaus said with a shrug, which was the truth for once.

“Then we’ll have to go back to the hospital, I can’t allow you to have any alcohol – ”

“Well, I’m sure the facility has an on-site medical detox if it’s as nice as you say it is,” Klaus interrupted. “So all we have to do is get to Malibu, right? And that’s what, fifty-something hours away without stops?” He sat up and lifted the cigarette to his mouth, chomping down on the butt as he spoke around it. “If I nurse a little bit of alcohol along the way, you know, just enough to keep Ben at bay, then I’ll be at just the right level of fucked up to make my intake team very happy,” he explained with a confident smile. “Trust me. After all, I’ve been to rehab once or twice already.”

“And that’s safe?”

“Yeah, it’s a slow taper until I can get into medical detox,” Klaus said with a nod.

“And...and you won’t get drunk?”

“No ma’am.”

“You lying mother – ”

“Ben, no swearing!”

“Fine fine fine!”

Thirty minutes later, the Hargreeves were back on the road, and Klaus was two bottles of Stolichnaya richer. He flashed Ben a grin after swallowing the first mouthful. Ben pursed his lips.

“Dude, that was monstrously fucked up of you,” he said.

Klaus blew him a kiss.

*

Eight hours and four-hundred-seventy miles later, Allison announced that she was tired and that they would be staying the night at some chichi hotel in Columbus, priced out of reach from the common fent slinger but not from the well connected dealer with _clientele_. Once they had settled in for the night Klaus would put down some feelers of course, but first the nondescript beige rental car needed a fresh tank of gas and Klaus needed a gas station hot dog.

Or so he thought. Because after all, at their core aren’t gas stations just havens of impulsivity and vice?

“Hey Allison?” Klaus asked, leaning heavily against the clouded glass countertop once they were finally inside. “Could you buy me cigarettes?”

Allison sighed. She flashed the girl behind the counter a tight-lipped smile and said “And two packs of Marlboro longs, please,” with the ease of someone who had purchased cigarettes a thousand times before. Klaus arched a brow (his sister smoked? Since when?) before shifting closer toward Allison. He smiled and batted his eyes.

“Hey Allison?” he repeated. “While we’re here could you also buy me one or two of those itty bitty teeny _winzig_ bottles of booze? Just one or two,” he continued, as he pointed at the array of airport bottles displayed prominently on the counter, behind a locked cabinet.

Allison huffed.

“What happened to the two gigantic bottles of vodka I bought you in Pennsylvania?”

“ _Bitte_?”

Allison stared at Klaus with a look of horrified disbelief. Pressing shoulder-to-shoulder against Allison, Klaus whispered “I just want a little in the way of variety, alright?”

Allison balled her hands into fists before releasing them, saying, “Okay. May I also have one or two – ”

“Actually I need three of these, two of those, four of those in the back, and one of the 99 Bananas,” Klaus quickly said to the girl behind the counter. He cast his eyes back up at Allison and smiled sweetly at her.

“Are you finished?”

“Also some scratchers?”

“Klaus,” Allison said shortly. “Go back to the car.”

“For two scratchers.”

“BACK TO THE CAR!”

*

In case Allison had forgotten, Klaus was not a morning person.

This made itself obnoxiously clear the very second Allison tried to rouse him the next morning. It started at six, with a gently whispered “it’s time to get up” before progressing into what most normal human beings would consider as an all-out assault on the senses over the next half-hour: first came the lights, then the television, then a cold splash of water, then finally Allison straddling her brother as she beat a feather pillow against the back of his head.

“Come _on_ , once we get back on the road we aren’t getting off of it for another twelve hours,” Allison reasoned, no, begged. She gave the pillow one final thump off of his head. “That’s twelve hours you can spend sleeping – inside the car!”

“I don’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars a day,” Klaus murmured. “Besides, check out is at 10.”

“Today I need you to make an exception!” Allison snapped. She rolled off of Klaus and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “Listen. I know it’s not ten thousand dollars, but I’ll buy you breakfast instead?”

“Mnph, five more minutes.”

Allison huffed and stood up. Without warning, she jerked the down comforter from the bed before gasping sharply and tossing the comforter back over Klaus.

“And put on some pants!” she wailed.

And so, the two living Hargreeves and their ghostly brother piled back into their nondescript beige rental car and proceeded westward as the early morning stretched into several hours and one state. Or was it two states, Klaus wondered as he tore his losing scratchers into itty bitty teeny _winzig_ squares, watching with idle boredom as the prairie flew past his window. He dust the bits of paper away from his torso and onto the floor mats before exhaling.

This was going to be a very long, very flat trip through most of the continental United States, he realized. Which was exactly why he thought to plan ahead.

The night before, Klaus had taken it upon himself to make a couple of...preparations, as it were. Long after Allison had gone to bed, Klaus followed his feelers to a college bro on the upper floor, who sold him a little something for the road. After all, he had a shiny new rehab to get to and he couldn’t possibly slow Allison down with a nasty bout of dope sickness! That would easily add days to their journey, days they couldn’t afford to lose.

And besides, when he got dope sick he was prone to an obscene amount of vomiting and he couldn’t possibly vomit all over the rental! That would be horribly upsetting for all parties involved and Klaus was almost certain that the rental policy strictly stated “no junkie vomit in or on any part of the vehicle”. Simply put, he was doing Allison a favor. He was _maintaining_.

So Klaus prepared a handful of pick-me-up’s – therapeutic doses of course – for the journey ahead. And when his careful preparations were completed he gave himself a pat on the back, stripped out of everything but his skivvies, and flopped into his own bed.

Which brought him to the present. He certainly could do with one of those pick-me-ups, after all, nothing was more American than a McBreakfast with a side of opioid dependency. With his overcoat draped over him like a blanket, he reached into the breast pocket and felt for one of the warm guns that would shoot him to the moon, right next to Luther.

“So tell me again how long we’re going to be on I-70?” Klaus asked casually, his eyes fixed on the back of Allison’s head. He was an old pro and he was confident that she would suspect nothing. But Ben, clever Ben, he was casting judgment from the front seat and spouting cute little quips like “Klaus, you can’t be serious.” or “Klaus, can’t this wait?”

Klaus raised a free finger to his lips. Then he spun his finger, turn around, turn around, and with one final huff Ben faced forward, slouching like a petulant child.

“For awhile,” Allison answered, eyes fixed on the road. “We’ll probably spend the night in Kansas.”

“Wow, Kansas,” Klaus marveled as he worked the orange safety cap off of the syringe, under the shield of his overcoat. “Don’t they have the world’s largest ball of twine?”

“We can’t afford to make any additional stops, Klaus.”

Klaus tapped the pit of his elbow and hummed in response. Seconds later, he was pressing his finger over the fresh pinprick and tucking the empty syringe back into his pocket, and in the front seat Ben began to blur around the edges and threatened to disappear.

Klaus snuggled under the overcoat and smiled.

“You’re awfully quiet back there,” Allison said a second later. “Still doing okay?”

“Oh yeah, sorry, that truck stop billboard a mile back really cranked my hog, if you know what I mean. So I was just, you know, rubbing one out,” Klaus said.

“Say something like that again and I won’t hesitate to drive this car straight into a bridge,” Allison said cheerfully.

*

Some time later they spontaneously diverted south, to a small town twenty minutes north of Wichita because Klaus wanted Cracker Barrel and if Klaus wanted Cracker Barrel, Allison wasn’t going to say no. From the start, she noticed that Klaus was _much_ thinner than she remembered and in her opinion the salt and fat would do him a little good.

“We should probably get the fuck outta here, because this town breeds serial killers,” Klaus later hissed through a mouthful of biscuits and gravy.

“And you couldn’t have told me before?” Allison asked.

Klaus shrugged.

So they boxed up their leftovers (which remained forgotten on the two-top, and in Allison’s case possibly hawked on eBay) and continued working their way through the Midwest, stopping for the night at a chain hotel where Allison prayed that Klaus would have a difficult time scoring amphetamines off truckers.

Thankfully, he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t leave the room. Not for vending machine snacks, not for a dip in the hot tub, not even for trucker crank. To Allison’s relief, he appeared perfectly content with reclining in bed and scattering Goobers onto the sheets as he attempted to throw each piece into his mouth.

“Tell me we’re going to make a blanket fort and watch 80’s movies like we did when we were kids,” Klaus said dreamily, and Allison obliged happily.

“Great!” Klaus exclaimed. He jumped onto his feet and wobbled unsteadily on the mattress before making a flying leap and bouncing off of the same cheap, generic wardrobe found in every hotel in America. “You go set up the fort and I’ll go powder my nose!”

Allison paused.

“Wait, Klaus...” she began.

“Yes?”

“Just…just...just keep the bathroom door open, okay?” she stuttered, and Klaus gave Allison a Boy Scout salute, murmured a quick “ _eine minute_ ”, and eagerly scrambled into the bathroom.

And Allison, sweet Allison, enabling Allison, stood dumbfounded before turning and gently pulling the comforters from each of the queen beds, her mind drifting.

A year ago there had been a family meeting. The only Hargreeves who had been in attendance were Pogo, Diego, and herself. We have to intervene, Diego said. Klaus is getting worse, he’s begun using heroin, fucking heroin, what are we going to do? We have to stop him. He needs to get better, damn it.

But we cannot force him to accept rehabilitation, said Pogo. He will go, but he either treats the experience like a vacation or he simply checks out early. He’s twenty-six. We cannot make him seek help.

Well, what about harm reduction? Allison offered.

Oh, so you mean enabling? barked Diego.

If we can’t stop him, then we can at least make sure he’s using safely, right?

Diego and Pogo didn’t agree. If she loved her brother, she would want him to get clean and stay clean, they said. Then Diego offered to start a pool to fund a large, stone statue of 00.04 to stand in the garden next to 00.06, because we’re just going to bury him anyway, I mean, fucking heroin. I give him six months.

Diego, that’s terrible, Pogo scolded and Diego began to backpedal, should we honor a junkie? At least Ben died a hero.

The meeting adjourned and Allison remembered immediately ducking into a drugstore to grab a box of needles. Unwilling to waste any time checking on the legality of such a purchase, she told the pharmacist that she heard a rumor that she could get a hundred count for her diabetic dog.

She did this for a year. From her bubble in California, she would send the occasional care package off to Klaus, encouraging him to be safe. Encouraging him to get clean. Really, it was no surprise when she finally got _the_ phone call from somewhere the East Coast informing her that Klaus had overdosed in an abandoned motel, where he had been left to die by others too scared to be seen.

Her eyes drifted to the wedge of warm light pouring out from the bathroom. She inhaled sharply and swallowed back the lump growing in her throat before turning her eyes back to the TV.

Focus on the TV. Focus.

There. This is one of your favorite movies. Focus.

Don’t focus on Klaus.

Focus on the TV.

Focus on the blanket fort behind you.

Focus on another lifetime. Focus on a Saturday afternoon, focus on _In the Zone_ blasting from a cheap boombox. Allison and Klaus, fourteen years old, dancing in their socks. Klaus grinning at Allison and saying that he was happy someone else in the house loved Britney as much as he did.

Klaus grinning at Allison and saying that he was happy to have a sister like her.

She cupped her face in her palms and allowed the dam to break.

*

“Dude, you’re killing her,” Ben muttered from his perch along the bathtub’s too-glossy lip. Klaus sighed and jerked the sink’s cold water tap to the ‘on’ position. Water shot from the tap at full blast.

“I know,” he intoned sadly.

“You’re killing me too.”

“That’s impossible.”

Ben pursed his lips. He shook his head slowly before speaking.

“You have _got_ to try this time, because you’re starting to run out of next times.”

Klaus dipped his wrists under the stream of cold water, holding them there until the chill crept up his forearms. After a moment, he reached for a clean, dry washcloth and dipped it under the tap, soaking it completely through before squeezing it and shaking it out. He wiped the beads of sweat from his face.

“Ben...”

“Klaus, I can’t stay with you if you’re dead. At least, I don’t think.”

“But then we can finally be Ghost Bros, Ben. And didn’t you say you wanted to be Ghost Bros?”

Ben lowered his gaze.

“In about forty or fifty years,” he said quietly.

Klaus laughed bitterly. He switched the faucet off and looked over at Ben. With feigned optimism, he said “cheer up, buttercup. I’m fine. Even the doctor couldn’t help but marvel at my recovery. And if it helps you feel better, then it’s my solemn promise to never, ever let that happen again.”

Ben gave Klaus a look of disbelief.

“You promise not to ever overdose on heroin again,” he said flatly.

“Scout’s honor.”

“You’ve already had three overdoses.”

“And each of those overdoses were learning experiences.”

“Really? And what exactly did you learn? It certainly wasn’t stop touching heroin.”

“HEY!” Klaus barked. “I’ve got it under control. Besides, Bowie did it and Bowie was glamorous! Bowie wrote Station to Station while nodding off his ass!”

“You’re not Bowie. You’re my brother and I love you too much to see you like this. I mean...who are you kidding? Look at yourself, Klaus. You look like shit.”

Klaus scoffed. Ben was wrong, he didn’t look like shit. In fact, he looked better than ever! He _finally_ managed to shave off those stubborn five pounds and now had the visible ribs and thigh gap to make Kate Moss absolutely _spit_ with jealousy. Wasting away? No, he was clearly emulating Calvin Klein models of the 90s, the same ones whose posters he used to obsess over! Oh, if only he could be a wealthy model having cocaine for breakfast…

“It’s called heroin chic?”

“It’s called dying, dumbass.”

Klaus shook his head. He wasn’t dying. He wasn’t...completely healthy, but he wasn’t dying. He rubbed the pit of his elbow and winced at the dull ache that greeted him.

Sure, he lost a lot of weight. Sure, his face was gaunt and his skin was pallid and his eyes lost their sparkle, but on the inside he was fine. He just had the exterior of a man who spent his entire life running from the literal-and-metaphorical ghosts of his emotionally abusive childhood, that’s all. Ben of all people should have understood _that_!

Klaus leaned over the sink and gingerly began to touch his face, pausing over blemishes and pulling back fine lines. After deciding that Botox was right for him, he lowered his head and spread his palms flat over the counter’s puddled surface.

“We agreed that it could be worse, it could be meth,” Klaus reasoned.

“Klaus,” Ben began. He rose from the edge of the bathtub and stood near his brother. “Stop justifying it. Accept what you already know – that you need help.” He pointed toward the open door, to where Allison was waiting for him. “Allison has just given you the opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t throw it away.”

“But – ”

“I know you’re scared. It unfortunately comes with the territory.”

Klaus groaned and raked his fingers through his hair in frustration.

“Come on Ben, I haven’t been truly, _truly_ sober since I was fourteen,” he whined. “I know _I_ need help but haven’t _you_ considered that maybe I’m a lost cause?”

Ben shook his head.

“You’re not a lost cause. Because that implies you’re not worth fighting for.”

Klaus dropped his hands to his sides and looked back at his reflection in the mirror. Doing everything he could to avoid Ben’s gaze, he said “I’ll take what you said to heart. In the meantime I advise anyone with a weak constitution to leave the room.”

Ben fixed his eyes to a spot of discoloration on the tile with a look of dejection.

Moments later, the light in the bathroom cut off and Klaus padded quietly to the blanket fort, sinking to his knees so that he could crawl through the fort’s maw before settling comfortably next to Allison, his head rolling onto her shoulder.

“You’ve been crying,” he said. “Why? A girl like you is too pretty to cry.”

Allison shook her head.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I just keep forgetting that this is such a sad movie.”

Klaus nodded against Allison’s shoulder.

“Mm, it’s true. Pretty in Pink is one of the most well-respected tragedies in all of modern cinema,” he said agreeably. He turned his eyes up toward Allison, and for once didn’t shy away from the look of tormented disbelief that overwhelmed her gentle face.

“Hey,” he interrupted. Allison glanced down.

“Hm?”

“I’m really going to try this time,” he whispered.

And Allison shifted, pressing closer to her brother and putting an arm around him in a half-hug.

“That’s all I ask.”


	2. It's A Fucking Deathwish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A road comedy to rehab except this isn’t a comedy and no one is laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took several evolutions but I'm satisfied with the conclusion. Please be aware that this chapter contains a depiction of the consequences of drug use so if that makes you uncomfortable you might not want to read it. As always, my goal is to capture the spirit of the characters so I hope I did just that. Enjoy and thank you for all your positive response to the first part!

I-70 snaked through Colorado, a state Allison desperately wanted to shoot through as quickly as possible. She wasn’t stupid; she knew exactly what Colorado was culturally known for and would roll her eyes each time Klaus squeaked “ooh, a dispensary!” from the backseat.

However, even she had her limit and upon hearing Klaus’s sixteenth “canna-fact”, she pulled off into the parking lot of a small dispensary smack-dab in the middle of nowhere and snatched from her purse a crisp hundred-dollar bill.

“Only get this much and no more, alright?” she demanded, and Klaus nodded with the expression of a small child waiting to be released unsupervised into a candy shop.

Soon, the rental began to fill with the pungent scent of marijuana and Allison couldn’t roll the window down fast enough. From the rearview mirror she peered at Klaus lying across the backseat, a lit joint in one hand and the other shaking a bag of special gummy bears into his mouth.

“That all better be gone by the time we reach the state line,” she warned, while hoping against hope that the smell of burning weed would dissipate long before she returned the car to the airport.

“Mmm yeah no don’t you worry about that, I gotchu,” Klaus said around a mouthful of bears.

*

The day ended uneventfully in Green River, a city Allison remembered from an old Stephen King novel and a city Klaus remembered from The Wizard. It was in Green River where Allison soon realized the mistake she made in taking I-70 to Malibu.

“Because at some point I-70 is going to merge with I-15,” she mumbled as she traced the route on her map with a number two pencil. “Damn it, we’ll have no choice but to go right through Las Vegas and I will not be stopping in Vegas, do you understand?”

Klaus blinked.

“But Britney’s residency ends _this year_ ,” he whined. “Allison, we’ve stayed in every night! I want us to go see Britney and get _suuuuper_ wasted and then stumble drunkenly off to the bathroom to conceive our weird incest love child!”

“Oh my God Klaus!”

“If Luther – ”

“If Luther said the same stupid thing you just said, I would make him walk the rest of the way but Luther has a filter and would never say something so braindead. In fact, I have half a mind to make _you_ walk the rest of the way, but you can’t take care of yourself so you need me!”

“Oh, kitten’s got claws! Speaking of kittens...”

“No.”

“But the cathouses are outside of city limits, everyone knows that!”

Allison snorted.

“Try as I might, I just cannot picture you in a brothel paying for sex,” she laughed, shaking her head.

“Nope! Never pay for what you can trade for drugs!” Klaus said agreeably, and Allison pursed her lips. She couldn’t quite tell if he was joking and knowing him, she didn’t want to hazard the guess.

And so the two living Hargreeves and their ghostly brother worked through the mountains of Utah in their nondescript beige rental car, bidding a _uf Wiedersehen_ to I-70 and _hallo_ to I-15. And around them, the wide expanses of open desert began to yield to neon lights and casinos rose up from the sands as glittering temples of vice.

“Okay, what about a strip club,” Klaus suggested.

“No.”

“Like, a real strip club? Where the ladies have their shirts off?” Ben asked, his eyes as wide as saucers. Klaus shook his head.

“Like one of those grimy full nude places where you can pay a bouncer to touch one of the girls but instead they just take your money and you get kicked in the teeth,” he explained.

“Is this _really_ how you choose to spend your free time?” Allison asked with concern as Ben stared back at Klaus in disbelief.

“Those places don’t really exist,” Ben said in a hushed tone.

Klaus nodded enthusiastically.

“Oh man, I just want to see boobies. I don’t want to watch you get kicked in the teeth. Again.”

“Alright. Allison. Can we at least order up a hundred, no, TWO hundred dollars worth of room service and rent a softcore for Ben?”

“Starting right now we’re playing the Quiet Game and loser has to pay for room service,” Allison said with a tight smile.

“And the softcore.”

“Klaus, you just lost the Quiet Game!”

“Mm no you lost when you said “starting now” and kept talking. Everyone knows you announce the Quiet Game _first_ , and _then_ you say ‘starting now’.”

Touche.

*

From their final hotel in Henderson, Allison marveled at just how far they had come, and with relatively little drama. In fact, she found herself enjoying the impromptu road trip and was willing to overlook the looming reason _why_ she was forced to take said road trip in the first place.

Her mind began to drift to the possibility of future (drug-free) road trips when the needle tore from the record. After all, this particular road trip was going a little TOO smoothly, correct? And Allison was getting a little too comfortable around Klaus, the one brother around whom she should never relax, _correct_?

Correct!

Now, here it should be noted that the following events are at best an approximation, because it’s at this point that the two living Hargreeves are temporarily incapable of serving as reliable narrators and their ghostly brother Ben cannot be reached for comment:

From their final hotel in Henderson, Allison began to realize that something wasn’t quite right.

See, Klaus had decided on taking a bath thirty minutes earlier, and Allison realized that he still had the water running. Strange, because although he usually filled the tub to the tippy top it never took thirty minutes. So she called out to Klaus, and when he didn’t answer, she decided to pop her head in.

And Klaus was in the bathroom of course, but he was slumped in a rather peculiar way and completely oblivious to the thin stream that dribbled from the faucet, completely oblivious to the soapy lukewarm water rising around him.

And that’s when Allison saw the baggie and the needle and the lighter the rest of the kit scattered across the lid of the toilet tank, and _that’s_ when Allison realized that she was looking at an overdose, never mind that he had already overdosed a little less than a week ago.

This is where things get a little bumpy.

Allison skidded into the bathroom, shut the faucet off, and hauled her unconscious brother from the tub. Once she had him flat on his back, she jumped up and tore out of the bathroom and beelined to her purse, her beautiful new purse that she had spent a good chunk of her latest advance on. But that didn’t matter now, didn’t it, because her brother was unconscious and his breathing was shallow and if she wasted any precious time he was going to turn blue. And tucked inside the inner pocket of her brand new Bottega Veneta purse were doses of Narcan, because that was her life now: world-famous Allison Hargreeves was resigned to carrying Narcan in the off-chance that she needed to rescue her brother from himself.

And with trembling hands she sprayed the first dose up Klaus’s nose and began counting back from 120, because if he didn’t respond in two minutes she had to administer another dose, and this was on the advice of the other ladies in her support group, and these were ladies that had lost children to heroin. And although Klaus was a sibling and not a son she was still damned and determined to not join their ranks, at least not today.

92, 91, 90, how long does this take

89, 88, 87 please please please

86, 85, 84 oh god, I need to call an ambulance

83

82

At this point Klaus’s eyelids began to flutter.

*

“Klaus, you need to go to the ER,” Allison said sometime after the two living Hargreeves emerged from the miasma and settled back into the present, both damp and traumatized but both very much alive.

“I’m fine.”

“You just overdosed. Narcan helps, but you need to go to the ER. Come on, I’ll let you wear the Gucci kimono you keep trying to steal from me.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Klaus, please – ”

“God damn it Allison, I think I know when I need to go to the ER, I’m the fucking junkie, not you!”

Allison opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She raised her trembling hands to her face and exhaled a loud sob.

Klaus sighed. Now, Klaus was the asshole and he hated being the asshole, he really did. After all, Allison had already done so much for him. She flew out to see him after his overdose. She offered to pay for his latest stint in rehab. She drove him all this way to Henderson only to watch him overdose again, and she responded to it by hauling his naked ass from the bathtub and rescuing him with Narcan.

Allison had already done so much for him, and this was how he showed his gratitude?

“Allison, Allison, Allison, I’m so sorry,” he bleated before stepping toward her and folding his arms around her. “I’m so sorry for yelling at you, please forgive me.”

“Aaah aaaah” Allison squeaked.

“I promise, if I start to feel worse we’ll go to the ER,” Klaus said gently. “Right now what I really need is rest, and I can rest here for less than it costs to rest in the ER.”

Allison nodded.

“Alright, alright,” she repeated, her voice thick with emotion.

“Allison?”

“What?”

“Can I still wear the Gucci kimono?”

Allison bobbed her head. After what they went through, he could keep the fucking thing for all she cared.

“Allison?”

“What?”

“I...I don’t...idontwanttobealone.”

So the two living Hargreeves constructed a nest from pillows and comforters and fell into a single queen bed, just like when they were small children. And just like when they were small children, Klaus pawed through the folds of starched white fabric to search for Allison’s hand, and when he found it he laced his fingers through hers and held on as though he were holding on for his life.

Because in a way, he was.

And Allison smoothed her hand through his messy hair and whispered consolations to him as he silently wept himself into a restless sleep.

*

The next morning Allison called down to the front desk and requested that she extend their stay for one more night. After confirming that her credit card had been charged for two hundred and something dollars, she dropped the receiver back onto its base and fell back into bed.

“I’ll also call the facility and let them know we’ll be a little late,” Allison said. And next to her, Klaus nodded.

It had probably been close to two decades since the two of them shared a bed. In a past life, little Number Four would have nightmares nearly every night of the week and in response little Number Three would sometimes sneak out of her room and creep quietly down the hall, to little Number Four’s room. And she would climb into little Number Four’s bed, wrap her skinny arms around him, and whisper “it’s going to be okay.”

That all stopped when Dear Old Dad began sending little Number Four away for overnights in the mausoleum.

So she rolled onto her side and wrapped her arms around him and whispered “it’s going to be okay.”

Klaus shook his head. No.

“I’m going to call down for some toast and orange juice. Do you think you can manage that?”

Klaus nodded. Why not.

After breakfast, Allison decided to steal away to the balcony to have a smoke and think about how to address the elephant in the room. Per her map, Malibu was only a day away and she could drop Klaus off at the facility in under seven hours if she kept her foot on the gas.

She knew it was bad. Diego told her as much. But she didn’t realize just how bad it was. Two overdoses in a week? She had accepted a long, long time ago that Klaus was a fast-living addict and not even the love of his family could stop him, however, two overdoses in a week seemed a bit excessive, even for Klaus.

Behind her, there was a tiny “ahem” and she glanced back over her shoulder at her brother, before turning her gaze back toward the Nevada skyline.

“Hey,” Klaus said.

“Hi.”

“Is it okay if I joined you?”

“Sure.”

And before Klaus could plant his ass into a fashionably oversized patio chair, Allison had already lit and handed off a fresh cigarette to her sibling. He mumbled a small _danke_ and together they sat in awkward silence as they filled their lungs with carcinogens.

“Klaus,” Allison said after a pause. “Can I ask you something?”

Klaus shrugged.

“Are...are you _trying_ to kill yourself?”

Klaus chewed the bottom of his lip in contemplation. What a question. Well, if anyone deserved an answer, it was Allison.

“It’s…complicated…?” he croaked, and immediately he cleared his throat. “We’re probably going to want to order up a bottle of wine first.”

*

“First, you need to promise that everything I say stays between us. I don’t want to find out that Vanya published a sequel about me, alright?” Klaus said. “Because what I’m about to tell you I’ve told to no one else. Not even to my therapists.”

“How many therapists do you have?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Klaus said with a wave of his hand. “Do you promise?”

“Of course.”

“Okay.” Klaus inhaled deeply and then decided it better to drain his glass of wine first. After pouring himself a refill, he turned his eyes skyward and said “The short answer is I came to terms with the fact that I could drop dead at any moment. It just goes with the territory. But the long answer...the long answer...”

“It’s okay to blame Dad. I mean, he could have chose to raise us differently but he didn’t.”

Klaus shook his head.

“Mmm, no, not Dad,” he said. “It’s easier to accept that he’s a monster on par with Mengele and move on than it is to blame Dad. Because let’s face it dear, even without Dad I would still be a heroin addict. I mean, we both know that this isn’t about Dad. This is about” and he tapped his temple with his index finger.

“I can only assume I began seeing ghosts the second I shot out of the womb,” he continued. “Because I remember Pogo once saying that when I was a baby I would scream my little head off from dawn to dusk and they couldn’t figure out what, if anything, was wrong with me. Maybe I’ve always been a magnet for the dead. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop screaming. It makes sense, right?”

After a long pause, Allison said “the nightmares” and Klaus nodded.

“Everyone knows I talk in my sleep,” he said. “Everyone. But what everyone doesn’t know is that I only talk in my sleep when the drugs start to wear off. Because the drugs, the booze, all of it – it makes them all go away and for a few precious moments I get to experience peace and quiet. So you see, with or without Dad, I would have still found the bottle, and the blow, and the heroin...” And he began to giggle, before covering his hand over his mouth to suppress his cackling laughter.

Except Allison could differentiate between laughter and crying and Klaus was a terrible actor. If he thought he could mask his wails as laughter, he was fooling no one.

She moved to the patio chair and settled herself on the arm before pulling Klaus into her arms, her chin settling on the top of his head.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, and Klaus shook his head violently.

“It’s not,” he choked. “It’s not, because I never meant for it to go this far, I never fucking _imagined_ that when I started drinking it would lead to...to...” He jerked his hand to motion at himself. “But without it, they...they...they don’t stop, they never stop, they’re constantly begging, and pleading, and sometimes...sometimes...they like to threaten me…

“I just want them all to shut the fuck up and leave me alone!”

And there it was. He couldn’t control his ability, so he had decided to numb himself to it instead. And if he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – learn how to control it, then there was only one end to the ride, wasn’t there?

“We’ll figure this out,” she whispered. “Just please, please, please promise me that you’ll hang on.”

*

The final leg of the trip had been as cheerful as a funeral. At one point, Ben even sat next to Klaus in the backseat and tried to cheer him up with dirty jokes, however, his delivery was awful and the punchlines were all wrong.

“You’re too sweet to tell smutty jokes,” Klaus said aloud.

“Who, me?” Allison asked.

“Sure,” Klaus said. He pressed his stubbled cheek to the window and peered at the Pacific Ocean as it blurred past, before suddenly deciding a change in tone was necessary if he was going to go to rehab with a clear head. So he sat up and leaned in, his arms slung around the head rests of each front seat.

“Who wants to hear a story from my involuntary stay at a psychiatric hospital?” Klaus asked.

“When were you in a psychiatric hospital?” Allison asked, as Ben raised his hand and shouted “Me! Me!” over her.

Klaus nodded.

“Alright. So, to properly tell this story, we must go all the way back in time to the year 2016. Picture then a younger me, trusting, vulnerable, keenly aware of my budding sexuality – ”

“Last year,” Allison interjected. “I get it. Go on.”

“Allison? Please? I’m the storyteller. I’m weaving for us an _experience_. Okay? Now. As I was saying, I carried about me a certain naivety that people of a lesser nature often exploited. One such individual lead me to some really bad crank.”

“Oh my God,” Allison groaned.

“Now Allison, you might remember my summer of ‘69 where we all thought I gave myself permanent brain damage from the sheer volume of LSD I was taking, right? Mere child’s play compared to this particular breed of crank – ”

“Please stop saying crank.”

“Because for the first time in my life I found myself being held against my will for seventy-two hours! In a state psychiatric facility!” Klaus exclaimed. “Now, I’m afraid the details are a little murky, but I do remember the monkey pit in the zoo and I believe that might hold the key to my incarceration. But I’ll save that story for my next trip to rehab. One minute,” Klaus said, and he cleared his throat and retrieved from his breast pocket the pack of Marlboro longs from Ohio. He pulled one out, lit it, and inhaled deeply before continuing. “Now, where was I? Oh yeah. Several hours in and I was feeling restless. You see, earlier I had struck up a sort-of acquaintanceship with a fellow patient, a man I’ll call Richard because well, his name was Richard. And Richard...Richard was telling me about these meds the nurses were giving him. The way he described how he felt on them, well, it made me want to try these meds too!”

“You did NOT steal a patient’s medication,” Allison warned, and Klaus shook his head.

“No I didn’t steal from him, I offered him a trade!”

“That’s somehow worse, you don’t know what sort of interactions he might have – ”

“But he wasn’t interested in my trade!” Klaus said.

“That’s...that’s good?”

“So I decided to sweeten the pot by offering to blow him in the bathroom! I said, Richard, if I can polish your knob better than a _hure_ the night before the rent is due, do you think I could try these pills that you speak of? And Richard, he said sure! So we sneak off to the handicap stall in the bathroom and I drop to my knees – ”

“Alright, you can stop right there,” Allison said.

“ – and I’m absolutely gagging on this thing, tears rolling down my cheeks and _everything_ because I mean, it was just a _little_ bigger than what I’m typically used to – ”

“Can we continue this story as though my daughter were in the car next to you? Please?” Allison interrupted. “In fact, let’s just pretend that she’s in the car, right now, and let’s tell another story!”

“ – and at one point I actually considered letting him bend me over the toilet bowl like the filthy bottom I am, because it had been _so_ long and I _desperately_ needed a man with a big cock to _completely_ rearrange my insides, oh my _GOD_ – ”

“KLAUS ENOUGH!”

“And it was all for two measly risperdals! I don’t even _have_ schizophrenia, isn’t that wild? I was about to let this complete stranger raw dog me in the handicap stall for two risperdals! HA!”

“Oh my God Klaus, you are absolutely unbelievable,” Allison groaned. And Ben stared at Klaus, his jaw practically on the floor.

“I missed _that_?” he asked.

After several miles of awkward silence, Klaus flicked his cigarette butt out the window and said “That was just my first day. Let me tell you about the second one.”

“No!” Allison shouted, and Ben echoed with an enthusiastic “Okay!”

Finally, the nondescript beige rental car pulled up to the incredible facility Allison had heard a rumor about in Malibu, fashionably late of course but that was fine because Klaus firmly believed “time is bullshit and calendars are a global hoax to make you spend money in December”. A few feet away from Admissions, Allison slowed the car to a stop and threw it into park.

“Don’t go inside quite yet,” she said. “There’s...there’s something I wanted to say to you, but I want you to move to the front seat first. Please?”

“Alright, alright, I suppose we can switch seats,” Ben muttered.

“Okay, then let’s go ahead and get this out of the way,” Klaus said aloud.

“Get what out of the way?” Allison asked as she watched Klaus climb out of the back seat. He came around to the passenger’s side and opened the door, but instead of settling into the front seat he returned to the back and held the door open.

“C’mon, I look crazy out here, just get in,” Klaus pleaded.

“I can just...you know...pop back there instead,” Ben said.

“But I’m _holding_ the door _open_ for you! Why won’t you indulge me?”

“Klaus, who are you talking to?” Allison asked, her anxiety rising.

“Sometimes I think you act this way to play up your insanity,” Ben groused as he stepped out of the car and into the back seat. Klaus slammed the back door shut with more intensity than necessary and took Ben’s former spot with a small huff.

“What you get for being polite these days, am I right?” he bitched. “So. Sister. What is it that you wanted tell me?”

Allison blinked back her bewilderment and shook her head before speaking.

“I was thinking about...well,” Allison began. “How do I say this...you know, humans have a long and colorful history of mediumship. I’m sure that if we start with that, perhaps we can begin to figure out how to…I don’t know, help you.”

“Have you ever seen the movie The Sixth Sense?” Klaus interrupted.

“Y-yes, a long time ago, but – ”

“I’ve always hated that fucking movie,” Klaus sighed. “Because I always run into that one little bitch that asks me ‘hey Séance, is it like that movie? Do you see dead people? Ha ha ha!’” He shifted in the bucket seat to better face Allison. “There are two very fucked up things about that movie. One, the little boy. How on earth could anyone with a conscious make a little boy _see_ those things? Two, it _is_ like that, alright? It _i_ _s_ like the fucking movie! Sometimes – sometimes, it’s your great aunt Ethel who died peacefully in her sleep that calls to me and she’ll ask me if I know the way to heaven and oh, you _want_ to help great aunt Ethel get to heaven because all she ever wanted her whole life was to sit next to _Jeezus_. But sometimes – most of the time – you’re visited by some Hatchet Face who was chopped to death by a fucking farm hand and you’re eight years old and lying in bed and staring face to face with something that doesn’t even HAVE A FUCKING FACE – ”

“Klaus,” Allison said gently, and immediately Klaus came out of his trance.

“Yes?”

“It’s going to be okay.”

Klaus simply stared through Allison.

Allison reached across the center console for Klaus’s hand and gave it a squeeze before saying “Klaus...if you could use your power for anything at all, what would you use it for?”

“To have a television show like John Edward,” Klaus said without hesitation. “To go on tour, to write bullshit books, to be John Edward. I want to be the queer John Edward.”

“If we work together and figure this out, what if I made a few calls and helped you get your television show? You have the looks and you have the charisma, you could make for interesting daytime tv.”

“You’d do that?”

“Only if you can learn to control your abilities and stay clean. Is...is that fair?”

“Can I think about it?”

“Of course.”

“Allison?” Klaus asked. “I’m sure you aren’t too far away...do...you think you can come and visit? You know, make the ninety days a little more bearable for me?”

And Allison hummed an itty bitty teeny _winzig_ hum and said “I’m really, really going to try.”

Klaus sighed.

And so the two living Hargreeves shared a brief kiss and a long, tight hug before Klaus hopped out of the front seat of the nondescript beige rental car and shambled toward Admissions. He never bothered to look back.

*

Three days later Klaus dropped a postcard in the mail. He couldn’t remember what was printed on the front side; he had quietly snatched it from a spinning array as he shuffled down Hollywood and Vine. But on the back he had scrawled “better luck next time don’t worry so much”, stamped it with a kiss, and sent it off to Allison.

Over his shoulder, Ben whispered sadly “so I guess this means I’ll be seeing you soon?”

Klaus smiled.


End file.
